Reality is neutral

The world just reflects your own feelings back at you. Reality is neutral.” - Naval Ravikant

I've been thinking a lot about this quote recently from the inimitable Naval Ravikant - and it's so true.

We look at the world around us, be that the real one or the online version in which we seem to be spending increasing proportions of our lives residing, and it's so easy to feel an impending sense of doom and despair.

The news is full of tragedy, cruelty and unimaginable suffering. Social media feeds us an infinite scroll of content that is specifically designed to wind us up, because that's what keeps us engaged, keeps us scrolling, keeps us typing.

They want you miserable

We've said this before, and it's unlikely we're going to stop anytime soon, but the increasingly consumerist, modern western society we live in wants us to be miserable.

Why?

Because miserable people buy stuff. That's it.

Happy, contented and fulfilled people don't need more things, new cars or bigger homes - they're quite happy with what they have right now - they have enough.

This is wonderful for the individual, their family and their health, but apparently terrible for the economy. So we're force fed tragedy, lust and envy until we open up amazon and start clicking.

No wonder we feel the world is a negative place.

Our kids see it differently

I watch our five, three and one year old haring around the living room, the park and the soft play and I feel myself welling up with a mixture of envy and anxiety.

I worry for them, for their future and their wellbeing - all of the bad things I know about that they haven't yet become aware of.

And I envy them for it - their blind optimism - completely present and focused on what's in front of them. Nothing matters other than getting down that slide, finishing that puzzle or finally getting hold of the purple ball.

They have such an intrinsically happy and positive outlook on the world as a whole. It's somewhere to be explored, to enjoy and experience, to learn and to play.

Of course they have elements of anxiety and fear of the unknown, and this is elevated in the context of their asynchronous development - at least two of our kids are super sensitive to scary or potentially dangerous situations, to the point where we can only watch certain episodes of Paw Patrol and even particular scenes from Peppa Pig need to be avoided.

I feel as if I have completely lost this ability to be present to that degree as an adult. My mind wanders at the slightest provocation - ooh I'll just check this, maybe that's come through, what's the weather like tomorrow, I wonder if...

etc.

I imagine it's due to a combination of my own flickering attention span and sensitivities that I see reflected in the kids, but it's also been encouraged by increasingly short-form, dopamine-spiking media content online that rewards you for switching your gaze from one video to the next.

It's terrifying when you think about it.

Returning to neutral

I find it valuable to re-read this quote by Naval (along with everything else he's said, written and tweeted) to remind myself of my own cognitive bias.

The world is not negative, or positive, it is neutral. It simply reflects your own outlook back at you with complete indifference.

So how you perceive it is largely up to you.

I'm not for a second dismissing the fact that there are terrible things happening all over the place - millions have no access to clean drinking water and untold violence and suffering is inflicted upon children that have done nothing wrong, meanwhile billionaires are buying up all the farmland and spending the entire GDP of a small nation on sending experimental rockets into the stratosphere.

There's a lot of stuff going on that is far from idyllic.

But I have also seen very unfortunately people with a wonderfully optimistic outlook on life, and a positive day-to-day experience of their existence, while miserable millionaires buy yet another Maserati to keep up with their neighbours and try to convince themselves that selling their 20s and 30s to an investment bank was worth it.

The point is we have at least a say in how we view the world, and therefore how we experience it, and if we can try to see things through the same wondrous, exciting and passionate lens that our children seem to use, then maybe we can claw back some of that childhood happiness that seems to have drifted away.